The US military-industrial complexalways wants to have an enemy and now it seeks to use Russia as an adversary, says former American presidential candidate Ron Paul.

“The people have to have the propaganda convert them into someone they hate, so they can hate,” Paul said on Friday, during the 2015 YAL National Convention in Washington, DC.

The former Texas congressman said the US is conducting a propaganda campaign aimed at spreading disinformation about issues like the crisis in Ukraine to show Russia as an enemy.

“All of a sudden the Cold War is over, and there’s a full explanation of what’s going on in Ukraine, and it’s not all the Russians’ fault, I tell you,” Paul said. “But we have to have an enemy to keep on churning this.”

The US military-industrial complex does not “deliberately say, well this started a war, but this started some aggravation which ended up in a war much bigger.”

Head of the US Special Operations Command General Joseph Votel has described Russia as an “existential threat” to the United States.

Votel told Fox News recently that Russia is trying to “create these frozen conflicts and create situations that are very, very difficult to resolve along their border.”

US Army General Mark Milley has also warned about Russia’s nuclear capability, saying it is the only country on earth that could destroy the United States.

The ties between Russia and the United States deteriorated after US-backed forces ousted Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.

The US and its allies accuse Moscow of sending troops into eastern Ukraine in support of the pro-Russian forces. Moscow has long denied involvement in Ukraine’s crisis.

On Friday, Paul also criticized the US government for waging what he described as “nonsense wars”.

“Why do we allow our government to push us around, and take away our liberties, and over tax us, and send us off to nonsense wars?”

In April, Paul wrote in an article that “the new ‘threats’ that are being hyped bring big profits to military contractors and the network of think tanks they pay to produce pro-war propaganda.”

The Pentagon has signed deals worth over $850 million with defense contracting companies. Raytheon, for instance, received $700 million of the total amount just to install new equipment in a Cold War-era nuclear bunker.